


A Second Night in Winter

by vials



Category: Declare - Tim Powers, The Moscow Trilogy - Simon Sebag Montefiore
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternative Universe - Declare, Gen, One Night in Winter, man this really ran away with me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-27
Updated: 2018-06-27
Packaged: 2019-05-29 05:41:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15066398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vials/pseuds/vials
Summary: Of all people, Andrei and Serafima should know what could happen in a night, but then again they should also both know that there's always much more going on than meets the eye.





	A Second Night in Winter

Andrei didn’t think he would ever see it again.

Even when he allowed himself to register the thought, he never let himself consider what it was. Not until he saw it again. Not until it was too late. Perhaps there would have been something he could have done, if he’d acknowledged it – told someone, maybe, or asked his mother if she had seen it too. He had tried, but every time he had thought he had worked up the courage, his nerve would fail him at the last moment.

 _Coward_ , he thought, as clearly as he had thought anything. Only meters in front of him, the blood ran in rivulets down the cracks in the pavement. _Coward. Why did you think you were safe?_

It was too much of a coincidence, even if he wanted to pretend it was. Rosa and Nikolasha were dead, and the cause of their deaths was all too painfully clear, and if Andrei wanted to he could perhaps persuade himself that this was a terrible coincidence, just something that had happened, nothing to do with that. He had been on the verge of telling himself that, until he had looked up and seen her watching him.

It was undeniably her. Perhaps from a distance she could be mistaken for an old _babushka_ , an elderly woman aged further by how tough life in Moscow had been during the war; shawls wrapped around her and her cheeks hollow, her wild hair unbrushed. But there was no way that the hardships of war could explain how she seemed to float a couple of inches above the blood-streaked pavement. There was no way that the war could explain the dark pits that were her eyes, nor the way that the entire world seemed to tilt to meet her when Andrei looked into them. He felt himself stumble to the side, unbalanced, his head screaming in pain, and someone grabbed his arm to steady him; he had almost fallen over entirely. Someone asked him something – Andrei couldn’t hear what they asked over the high-pitched ringing in his ears, but somehow he got it into his head that they thought he had become faint because of the sight in front of him. Ridiculously he felt the blood rush to his cheeks; he didn’t want them thinking he was a coward, even though he knew it to be true. He shrugged out of their grip and took another stumbling step; when he looked back to the woman, she was gone.

His heart thudding in his chest, he looked around wildly, hoping for a glimpse, a clue, a way to make it right. He couldn’t find her, of course – there was no sign of her, not even a ripple in the air, but there was something else he wasn’t expecting. 

Instead of meeting her black eyes, Andrei’s gaze instead met Serafima’s. She looked unsteady, her face completely drained of colour, but she wasn’t looking at their dead friends. She had been looking where the woman had been, and as her eyes met Andrei’s, darkened with a fear she would never be able to explain, Andrei knew they shared an unspeakable truth.

*

It was no surprise when Serafima pulled him into an empty classroom one afternoon. More time had passed since the incident than Andrei would have expected, but it was still too soon for him: he didn’t want to accept that this was happening, and that Serafima had made the connection that he had hoped she never would.

“You know something,” she said quietly, watching him with a quiet intensity, and Andrei just wanted to run, to bolt out of the door and never stop.

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I know as much as you do.”

He should have known that playing dumb wouldn’t fly with Serafima. She gave him an awful look – not annoyed, not hurt, but closer to _disgusted_ , as though she couldn’t believe Andrei would be so blatantly avoidant. He felt his heartbeat quicken in his chest and swallowed, his throat suddenly dry. 

“I mean –” he began, but she cut him off before he could think of how to end the sentence. 

“I don’t mean about how they died,” she said firmly. “I mean about what I saw. You know something, because you saw it too, and you didn’t look shocked.”

Andrei blinked. “I didn’t?”

“No. You looked…” She paused, her eyebrows furrowing as she frowned, trying to think of the right word. “Resigned,” she eventually settled with. “As though you’d seen such a thing before and wished you never would again.”

Andrei swallowed again. Was he really that easy to read? He had always got the impression that Serafima saw more than she was willing to let on, but this was something else entirely. He hadn’t thought he was so obvious. Another thought brushed through the others, fleeting, as though he didn’t want to truly acknowledge it had ever been there at all: if she had seen that on his face, who else had? 

There was no use in lying to her, but still Andrei found he wanted to. “I…”

“Am I right?” she demanded. “We don’t have long. People will look for us. I don’t want to leave this room as clueless as when I came into it.”

Andrei opened his mouth and closed it again, several times. Where did he even begin? It was only Serafima’s suddenly hostile look that made him spit it out, the words coming out in a rush. 

“There are things out there,” he said, quickly, hearing how nonsensical the words sounded. “I don’t know what they are. I’ve seen her before – the _babushka_ , the one you saw. That’s what you saw, right?”

Her hostile look had melted into a look of relief. “Yes,” she said, her voice trembling slightly. “The one with black eyes.”

“I saw her a lot, when I was…” Andrei glanced around, suddenly self-conscious, and dropped his voice. “When I was in exile. Not often, you know, not _all the time_. But I saw her a lot. She would be lurking in the treeline, or I’d see her outside after night fell. Just standing. On the train, when we were travelling there and again on the way back, I saw her in some of the small towns and villages. Where the food was…”

He gestured, not daring to say it out loud. He had learned that nobody in Moscow acknowledged the famines, even when they were staring them in the face. It simply wasn’t done. 

Serafima nodded, and Andrei swallowed again. “I don’t know anything about her,” he added, apologetic. “There’s no one I can ask.”

“I guess that still hasn’t changed,” Serafima said glumly. “I don’t want to know, but at the same time I need to. I’ve never seen anything like that before in my life.”

“Most people don’t,” Andrei said, and he took a deep breath before adding, “or at least, most people don’t survive to tell about it.”

Serafima looked at him, her eyes wide. “What do you mean?”

“I can’t prove it,” Andrei said, and sighed. “But in exile, people would show up dead. For no reason. Or they’d go mad overnight, do horrific things to themselves. Many of them…” He pulled a face and gestured to his eyes. “Poked them out. It was hushed up as hysteria, something about how the cold can do that to you, or snow blindness making you see things. But it happened too often to be something so easily explained. I knew that she was behind it, but I don’t know why I can see her and not die or go insane.”

“The people who lived,” Serafima said slowly. “How old were they?”

“About our age.” He frowned. “Why?”

“I don’t know. Age, perhaps. But if we’re the same age…”

She trailed off, and not a moment too soon. They heard footsteps in the hallway but by the time they had registered them it was too late; the footsteps passed the classroom, paused, and then backed up, the door swinging open. Dr Rimm stood there, peering at the suspiciously, and Andrei had just had time to realise he needed to think of an excuse and then to realise that his mind had gone blank when he heard sniffing from beside him. He turned to see Serafima wiping her eyes, her cheeks somehow tear-streaked though seconds earlier she hadn’t looked close to tears at all. Her tears seemed to throw Dr Rimm; he looked decidedly uncomfortable, blinking stupidly for a moment before turning to Andrei accusingly.

“What’s going on in here? Why are you hiding?”

“I—” Andrei began, but thankfully Serafima rescued him.

“I’m sorry, Dr Rimm,” she said, sniffing again. “I just got s-so… so upset about…” She shook her head, wiping her eyes again. “Andruysha saw me duck in here and was checking on me.”

“We didn’t mean to cause you any trouble,” Andrei added quickly. 

Dr Rimm stared at them for a long moment, seemingly trying to work out if he could be bothered with any further interrogation, but evidently Serafima’s tears were too much for him because he waved them away with an annoyed flick of his hand. They dodged past him and walked quickly down the hallway; Andrei glanced at Serafima, but she silenced him with a barely perceptible shake of her head.

*

Andrei found it hard to sleep – harder than usual, of course, because it was difficult to sleep in a place so full of other people and all the nightly noises that brought. People snored, people shifted around, footsteps wandered back and forth, the toilet flushed and the sound of it rattled through the apartment. For someone who slept as uneasily as Andrei, it was impossible to get any real rest.

The worst part was that there was nowhere to go. Andrei wished he could get up and walk around, but the impracticality of that combined with what he feared he might see outside, and he remained where he was. Eventually, when laying there grew too uncomfortable, he wrapped the blankets around himself and went to stand at the window instead, somehow convincing himself that it might be safer to watch from there. At first looking outside was a relief, because he saw nothing at all, but it was a relief that only lasted ten minutes. Eventually he became aware of eyes on him, eyes that seemed to stare straight through him; he looked away, peering down the other end of the street, but eventually it was too much. He looked.

She was there, wild hair seeming to float around her head as though she were laying with it splayed out around her. Her eyes were blacker than coal and the street pitched and lurched towards her, accepting her as its new centre. Andrei’s breath caught in his throat and he wanted to look away, but found that it was impossible. Only when he saw movement behind her did he drag his eyes away, briefly, to see what it was.

Serafima was there. She looked dazed, but not dazed enough to not be aware that something was wrong. She wore a slight frown, and she was shivering. Andrei could see she was only in her nightdress. 

“Serafima,” he muttered, though of course she couldn’t heard him. “What do you want with her?” he asked the _babushka_ , but if she could hear him down there she didn’t acknowledge it. She stared at him for a long moment and then, slowly, she raised her arm and pointed at him. 

Andrei would never know how it happened. One moment he was standing, his forehead pressed to the glass, and the next moment he was standing, shivering, on the street outside. The pavement was like ice under his bare feet and he tugged the blanket around him more tightly, for a second completely confused, and then he felt her behind him and froze, too scared to even breathe.

He didn’t know what he expected to happen, only that _nothing_ was not on the list. He only dared move when he heard Serafima, who had been standing just out of his peripheral vision the whole time.

“Look,” she whispered, and he turned.

The _babushka_ was gliding away down the street, and Serafima took a few steps after her before Andrei finally caught up with himself and reached out, grabbing her arm. “Don’t!”

“What?” Serafima asked. “Don’t you want to know?”

“Know what?”

“What she wants? Why we’re out here?”

Andrei shook his head. “Nothing she wants can be good.”

“If she wanted to kill us,” Serafima said firmly, “she would have done so already.” 

She tugged her arm free and hurried down the street, bare feet slapping on the pavement. Andrei moved forward a step, stopped, looked back up at his window for a wistful moment. He almost went back inside, but then he looked again and saw Serafima’s light hair disappearing around the dark corner, and he cursed under his breath and hurried after her.

*

Really, they should have known that they would be caught. Two pyjama-clad schoolchildren running around Moscow at this time of night was bound to be noticed, even if most people didn’t see the strange figure they were following. The _babushka_ didn’t seem to have any aim, though occasionally she would look back at them as though making sure they were still following. Andrei was sure that there was no sense to it, but Serafima was adamant that it had to mean something. It turned out they would never find out who was right, because their journey was cut short all too abruptly.

The car had approached from behind them, oddly silent, and they only heard its engine when it was too late to run – not that there was anywhere to go anyway. They froze, the headlights lighting them up like a spotlight, both of them with their guilt etched all over their faces. How would they explain this? They had been warned already that they were being watched, and of course they were, being so close to Rosa and Nikolasha. They had been warned to lay low, to behave, and they were sure that being found in such strange circumstances certainly did not come under _behaving_. 

It would have been bad enough if the car contained a parent of one of their friends – Satinov, perhaps, and that was already too terrible to comprehend. Unfortunately Andrei and Serafima realised that they hadn’t been pessimistic enough.

The car slowed to a stop, and for a moment nothing happened. Then the back door swung open, seemingly by itself, and a figure leaned forward.

“Get in here,” it said, and neither of them moved. There was a pause, and then the figure sighed. “I’m not going to ask you nicely again.”

They glanced at one another, their stares each saying the same thing: _what choice do we have?_ They stepped the short distance to the car, Serafima getting in first, followed by Andrei. The door was closed behind him; he found himself sitting with his back to the driver, next to Serafima. She was rigid beside him, and when he glanced at her he saw her face was white with fear. Alarmed, Andrei looked over to their companion, sitting opposite.

It was dark in the car, but the occasional light from outside illuminated him just enough. Andrei saw the round face, the distinctive hairline, the glint of a pair of pince-nez.

“Now,” said Lavrentiy Beria, “why don’t you tell me what you’re doing out here at this time, dressed like that?”

His eyes lingered for a moment on Serafima, who shifted uncomfortably, tugging her nightdress further over her knees. Beria gave a small smile and then looked to Andrei, catching him by surprise. “Kurbsky, is it?”

Andrei swallowed. “Yes, Comrade Beria.”

Beria tutted. “You should keep better company, Serafima.”

There didn’t seem to be any point to bringing it up; Andrei guessed, correctly, that it was a warning. He could make life very complicated for the both of them. What choice did they have but to tell the truth? Even if the truth was unbelievable?

“There was a woman,” Andrei said, feeling Serafima look at him in alarm. She didn’t tell him to stop, however – he supposed she had as little idea of what to do as he did.

“A woman?” Beria asked. “She must have been something, to get you running after her in your pyjamas.”

“We saw her,” Serafima said quietly, “on the day our friends died.”

“And then we saw her again,” Andrei continued. “Or, I did. I don’t know if the same happened to Serafima. She was outside my apartment.”

“Mine, too,” Serafima said. “It was definitely her. I don’t know. It was stupid, but I wanted to know why.”

Beria looked a little sceptical, but not so much that it stopped him from asking the question that changed everything. “What did she look like, this woman?”

They told him. They left out certain details, of course, like her apparently levitating, but they couldn’t help the other details: her wild hair, her black eyes, how everything seemed to connect to her and it was dizzying to look at her. How other people didn’t seem to see her at all. How she radiated a kind of malevolence that seemed to compel them to do as she wished. It took them only a couple of minutes, but in those two minutes an obvious change had come over Beria. He was staring intently at them, searching for any evidence that they were lying; when they stopped talking, he looked momentarily furious, and Andrei could barely breathe through the sudden fear that gripped him.

“I’m going to ask you one question, and I am only going to ask it once,” Beria eventually said, after an excruciating pause. His voice was low, the forced calm of somebody fighting to control their anger. “I want you to answer me honestly, and God help you if you don’t.”

They watching him wordlessly, only able to nod when it became clear he demanded an acknowledgement. 

“You have not heard this from anybody else,” Beria said slowly, clearly, “and this is the truth from your own experience?”

“Yes,” Andrei croaked out, as beside him Serafima confirmed the same.

Beria watched them for a moment longer, and then the anger seemed to drain from his face to be replaced with something that looked like concern. He leaned back in his seat and sat in silence for a good minute. Finally he moved, leaning forward again and rapping the small window between Andrei and Serafima. The driver said nothing but the knock must have meant something; they felt the car slow and then turn, heading decisively towards a location unknown.

*

Andrei would never be able to make sense of that night, despite how many times he would go over it in later years. Everything had happened so quickly, and he had been so tired and confused and frightened, and it seemed that every time he saw someone they had a different opinion of him. He and Serafima had been taken to what they soon realised was Beria’s house, that grand villa with its imposing gates, but strangely they found no horrors waiting for them. Beria had disappeared into his study, leaving them alone for several minutes, too scared to talk, and then they had met his surprisingly kind wife Nina who had found them extra clothes to wear – nice clothes, a dress of Nina’s and a suit that had belonged to Beria’s own son, though why they were such nice clothes they only found out later. Nina had fussed over them and dusted them off and given them tea; Andrei and Serafima had been too stunned to question it.

When Beria reappeared from his study he had still looked distracted, but no longer agitated. He had been oddly fussy, too, inspecting the two of them like a father preparing for the in-laws to arrive, a thought that returned to Andrei with added humour later, when he was able to allow himself a moment to laugh at the ridiculousness of it all. Of course, that night, when Stalin himself had suddenly descended upon the house with a familiarity that suggested he did so often, it had been all Andrei and Serafima could do to remember how to stay upright. 

At first he had only given them a cursory glance, his gaze giving nothing away. He and Beria disappeared back into the study where they remained for almost twenty agonising minutes, though the wait was not as horrific as the walk towards the door when they were abruptly summoned inside. They practically had to hold one another up as they knocked on the door and entered; Andrei was positive he would forget how to walk, and Serafima was so rigid with fear that Andrei had to put a hand discretely in the small of her back and urge her forward. 

Their biggest surprise was that it seemed their fear was misplaced. Stalin was unexpectedly friendly, and despite themselves it was easy to feel so at ease when he was being so familiar with them. He invited them to sit, even getting up to fetch a chair for Serafima himself, and for several minutes the conversation was about safe things: their schooling, their future careers, the films Serafima’s mother starred in that Stalin loved so much. When the conversation did come back around to the point of the meeting, it was so effortless and casual that it was only when some of the words were out of their mouths that they realised how ridiculous it sounded. Somehow all of the details came out of them this time, even the unbelievable ones, but rather than finding themselves in trouble for lying, or being declared insane, they found that Stalin listened with grave concentration, interrupting only a couple of times to ask clarifying questions. All the while, Beria hovered at the edge of the room, half in shadow, a small frown of concentration on his face. 

When they had finished the story there had been a thoughtful pause, followed by some very odd questions. They were asked about their dreams. They were asked about their families – had anyone else seen such a thing? Did they have any siblings, including deceased ones? Were there any peculiar traditions or beliefs in their families? Neither of them could make sense of it, but regardless they answered honestly. Serafima couldn’t remember regular strange dreams, only a couple since the death of their friends. Andrei reported strange dreams, less of them now, but more frequent when he had been _away_ ; this comment, nervously made, was met with no hints of disapproval or further questions. Andrei reported no siblings, but shockingly heard Serafima say, quietly, that she had actually been a twin, but her twin had either been stillborn or died almost immediately after birth – she had never got the details, she confessed, because she had overheard the conversation when she shouldn’t have, and didn’t want to upset her parents. Serfima’s family didn’t have any strange traditions, but Andrei, again nervously, recalled his father’s habit of warning him not to look out of windows in the dead of night, and of the strange things they sometimes found together – objects, Andrei remembered. Household objects, but miniature.

These answers had been met with another thoughtful pause, longer this time, and finally a knowing look passed between Stalin and Beria. Then, perhaps the strangest question of all. 

“Could you perhaps,” Stalin said, in his characteristically slow manner, “tell me your exact birthdays?”

They did. It was the same day.

*

If Andrei had been confused by the night’s events, it was nothing compared to his poor mother. They had dropped Serafima off first – they being Andrei, seated in the back of Beria’s car with Beria and Stalin, though Stalin himself had walked Serafima to her door. He was gone for around fifteen minutes and then returned alone, giving no hint of what explanation had been given, if any. They then drove in unexpectedly comfortable silence to Andrei’s apartment block, whereupon he was instructed to go upstairs to fetch his mother, and whatever belongings they could bring with them.

Nervous once again, and still in Beria’s son’s suit, Andrei climbed the steps to his apartment in a hurry. He wasn’t sure what he was running into, but he knew better than to keep them waiting – thankfully he didn’t have to wait long for someone to answer the door despite the early hour, because it swung open at what felt like the first knock. Someone reached out and quickly pulled him in, calling over their shoulder as they did so.

“Inessa, he’s here! He’s in one piece!” 

His mother appeared from somewhere else in the flat, her face pale and tear-streaked, her eyes red. 

“Andruysha!” she gasped. She cupped his face and kissed him over and over, his cheeks and nose, and then let him go, taking a step back to look at him. “Why are you dressed like that? These aren’t your clothes. Where have you been?”

He knew he didn’t have a hope of explaining it to her. His worry that he would keep his unlikely companions waiting was enough for him to be able to inject a certain amount of authority into his voice. “Mama, you have to get your things. We need to go.”

Something flickered across her face that looked like fear. “What?”

“Trust me, Mama,” Andrei said, though he felt bad as soon as he said it. What did he know? 

“Where are we—?”

“I’ll explain later. Well, soon. There’s a car waiting for us. We have to go.”

Inessa looked at him for a long moment and then gave a curt nod. Packing didn’t take her long – they had few belongings. All of it could fit in a single suitcase, as Andrei took it from her as they headed down the stairs. Inessa either knew that he wouldn’t be able to explain, or she was so worried that she simply forgot to ask, because they descended the stairs in silence. 

She froze, briefly, when she saw the car. Like he had done to Serafima earlier, Andrei put his hand gently to the small of her back and pushed her forward. “Go on, Mama. They brought me here.”

“Who?” she asked quietly, and Andrei knew he couldn’t let her climb into the car with no warning.

“Comrade Stalin, Mama. He’s with Comrade Beria. We don’t want to keep them waiting.”

“ _What?_ ” 

Even as she said it, she moved towards the car, now understanding his urgency. Within seconds they were back in the car, the suitcase on the ground between them, Inessa unable to contain her shock as she stared at the men opposite her. Andrei had a sudden horrible thought – if it was all going to go wrong, it would be now. Now that the two of them were here, and both of them could be disposed of quickly and quietly. However, inexplicably, that was not what happened. 

“It has come to my attention,” Stalin said kindly, after the usual, if nervous, pleasantries, “that there has been a terrible mistake.”

“A mistake?” Inessa asked nervously, twisting a strand of her hair around her finger. “Surely not.”

“As you may know,” Beria continued, after a nod from his superior, “certain liberties were taken by my predecessor. During such actions, it was inevitable that some innocent parties were caught up where they shouldn’t have been. We have been working diligently to correct this.”

“Of course,” Inessa said numbly, and by now Andrei was just as confused. 

“Andrei has come forward with some incredibly important information, the likes of which I am afraid I cannot discuss further,” Beria continued matter-of-factly, no hint of the concern that Andrei and Serafima’s news had caused him earlier. “What I can tell you, however, is that it lead to an investigation that threw up some interesting points. Namely that your husband, Peter, was undoubtedly one of the innocents caught up in the sabotage of my predecessor, and secondly that Andrei possesses talents that will be very beneficial to the people – talents that are there, in part, thanks to your husband.”

Inessa nodded, no longer able to articulate what she was thinking, and Andrei watched quietly, barely able to take in what he was hearing. This much was news to him. 

“Therefore some changes are to be made to your circumstances,” Beria continued, as easily as though they were discussing what to have for breakfast, and not the fact that their entire lives were being changed. “It is the generous decision of Comrade Stalin that your husband is to be rehabilitated, and that your living situation is to better represent the services to be provided by your son.”

He met Andrei’s eyes as he spoke that final part, and Andrei knew better than to ask questions. He merely gave what he hoped was a determined nod, something that would convey he was on board. Beside him, his mother was spluttering her thanks, apologising for her shock, and through it all Andrei looked around in a strange trance, wondering if it could all be real. He expected to wake up and realise it had all been a dream; or maybe he had fallen out of the window, the glass simply giving way, and he was dead. That made more sense than this.

But he didn’t wake up. He was very much alive, but as he looked out of the window and saw the sky begin to tint with dawn, he couldn’t help the heaviness in the pit of his stomach. Something was expected of him – both he and Serafima. He didn’t have an idea what, but he knew all too well what would happen if they couldn’t provide it.


End file.
